Artists over her know it, the Print on Demand based on licensing in India plain old SUCK and sadly there is no worthy equivalent to Society6 and Redbubble in the subcontinent.
I worked with 4 of them in India, all 4 went bust without paying me my dues, with 2 of them the quality of the products was highly debatable too. I also attempted to sign up with "Daily Objects" which is still running but they were HIGHLY unethical in their process, made me upload 40 pieces of artwork in TIFF format, which is a super high res file that is NOT used by any PoD out there as it's pretty much a master file. 3 days after I sent those files (which I should never have agreed to) they contacted me to say that my work was "subpar" and they were cancelling my contract.
5 years into this commercial artist adventure, there is one thing I can say with absolute certainty : I flat out refuse to have a presence on another Indian PoD website without, none of the ones I worked with or attempted to work with were worth my time. From an artist point of view, I am far safer working with international ones like Society6.
Unfortunately, that means it's a bit difficult for my Indian audience to get access to my work, even though those international companies all ship worldwide. Usually, there are shipping fees that can be hefty (though not always) and many are put off by the price in USD, even though that in the end, you'd pay as much in India for something of the same quality.
So, what options do you have if you live in India and want your favourite, based in India artist's work on a product?
The simplest and only considerate way is to contact them and ask them to sell you a file that you can then print on a product at your own cost, or ask them if they could get it printed for you.
I regularly advertise in my Instagram stories that I can turn any of my artwork or pattern into a phone wallpaper for a fee, all you got to do is shoot my a DM to avail that offer. I am also totally open to creating a file that can go on a specific product that you will then have to get printed with your printing service of choice. In India, Ink Monk and Vistaprint are two really good companies you can rely on to get something printed.
An artist will then decide the price they are willing to sell you the printable digital file for. Frankly, I don't do it for anything less than 30% of the price of the product it's going to be slapped on. Why? Because the digital file stays in the possession of the buyer and they can do multiple copies and there is no guarantee that they will not use that file in illegal ways that I will have a hard time checking, this is called covering your bases when you are surface designer.
I used to have the things printed when requested, especially for people in my area, but this is frankly an added responsibility and I would not do it for anybody I don't know well. The risk of having the buyer want to return and argue a refund because they don't like the end product is something I do not want to deal with considering the print work is the work of a 3rd party and I don't want to be liable for.
Selling the printable file leaves the customer free to chose who they want as a printer, and argue directly with them if the end product is not up to their standards.
You'll sadly find that in India, the variety of products you can get a custom print of is VERY limited when it comes to enlisting a printing service. Till date I haven't found a single trustworthy company to print my design on a phone case, they all use cheap polycarbonate cases and print them on a sublimation printer that isn't properly calibrated and gives really LOUSY colors, even if you give them a high res file with a color profile embedded in, but you get what you get for the money spent.
My advice is to stick to printing services that are reputed and have a solid return policy. Be VERY wary of websites where uploading a file turns into a giant pain in the butt because they only accept ridiculously low file size, this is a sure sign that they will enlarge the file before printing and you'll loose quality on the final product.
As I said above, I know I can trust Ink Monk and Vistaprint, they printed quite a few things for me, including stickers I then sold on Etsy (when I was still selling physical items). I got a decent experience printing the round mouse pad in the first picture with YourPrint but can't vouch for their other products at all since I haven't tried them.
I had a TERRIBLE experience with a company called "Zapvi" for printing phone cases, on that alone I am really wary of giving them another chance for any other products. So much I am not going to share the link here, but felt the need to warn you all about them. Here is their phone case and the same pattern I printed home on glossy sticker paper on my Epson L805 printer to give you an idea of what I am talking about, and they are not the only ones printing phone cases that look that ugly.
Before I conclude this post, here are a couple of "DON'Ts" when it comes to having a custom design printed:
- Don't go lift an artwork from your favourite artist online! We deserve to be paid for what we do. Beside, you are likely to end up with a poor quality print since we again all cover our bases and tend to upload low resolution images online to avoid having our art stolen and reused without our permission on products.
- Don't bargain hard to lower a price with an artist. Again, we deserve to be paid fairly, and the prices we quote is our valuation. You may not agree with it, it might be out of your budget, but it doesn't give anybody the right to ask for a discount.
- Don't try to enlarge a file to print it on something larger, you'll loose resolution. A 300dpi file with a dimension of 4 x 6 inches will not print bigger than 4 x 6, the more you enlarge a JPEG or PNG file the more pixelated it'll look and that will translate in loss of definition on the printed product. You can always print it smaller, never bigger. The dimensions on the digital file is what you get as a full size print.
- Don't use a digital file you bought to profit from commercially unless you SPECIFICALLY asked and paid for a commercial license. Purchasing anything art does not gives anybody the intellectual property rights, those remain with the artist unless they willingly agreed to part with those rights and gave you their written words. A commercial license agreement is NOT a transfer of intellectual property, so be sure you are using the file you bought within the boundaries of the agreement you entered with the artist. If you need something for commercial use, be honest and clear from the start with the artist so that terms can be set accordingly.
- Don't modify a file you bought for anything but personal use. This means that you can decide to add the name of your kids on a file that will be printed on a mug, but you can't modify the colors or ad names and quotes to resell later, that would be considered derivative art and infringe on the copyrights of the original artist. Modifying a file NEVER negates the IP rights of the original artist.
